Porto: The City of Dis

The development of this project has ranged through art, philosophy, physics, poetry and finally evolutionary structure as I have tried to build a framework of thought in which to better understand the form and consequences of spatial practice.

Ultimately the project is not at a state of resolution that can compete at this level, but that is not to say that there is nothing here of value. If you can see the things I see; the recursive structures and the varying levels of interpretation; the reflections of place, culture, experience, and the references to wider, more literal forces of context; then I have achieved that which I set out to. The convergence of form, from the divergence of meaning.

James Morris

Jim’s proposition for a Retail Centre re-invigorates the decaying historic centre of Porto, currently marked by a scar left as a remnant of automobile-led city planning in the 1950s. Re-establishing a sense of presence on the site, his work avoids mimicry of the past; rather, its form restores through inhabited structure a landscape seemingly lost, its mass and gravitas evoking the spirit of the “tripe-eaters” of Porto. A darker side lies beneath this proposition, challenging and condemning paradigms that delimit personal freedom; his rigorous pursuit of this questioning and concurrent development of a highly personal language is to be commended.